-By Scott Cleland
A scan of the major comments just delivered to the FCC on the National Broadband Plan (which is due to Congress February 2010), spotlighted the big broadband policy “fork-in-the-road” decision that the FCC now has before it.
One road of the fork-in-the-road continues down the road of: Promoting facilities-based competition;Encouraging private investment in a wide diversity of technologies; and Facilitating a cooperative public-private partnership to address unserved broadband areas and lagging adoption of widely available broadband.
This road Involves no loss of the substantial competitive momentum that exists in the American broadband market; Facilitates public-private cooperation to accelerate, uninterupted, the shared goal of achieving universal broadband access as soon as practicable; and Produces the most and broadest economic growth and job creation.
Simply, this road is all about moving forward together towards a worthy and achievable goal that can bring the economy and society great benefits.
The other road in the fork-in-the-road is best encapsulated by FreePress’ comments to the FCC 6-8-09. Many view FreePress as the leading voice calling for a complete overhaul of U.S. broadband policy; they are the operator of SaveTheInternet.com and a driving forcebehind InternetforEveryone.org.
FreePress believes “The FCC’s broadband plan must chart a new direction for technology policy for this country.”
That “new direction” is the functional equivalent of a “U-turn” and moving backward about a decade. That “new direction” would be a de facto “do-over” and reversal of the broadband policy set by the Kennard-FCC near the end of the Clinton-Gore Adminstration.
Specifically, FreePress recommends in its public comments that the FCC:
- Turn around, go back and “revisit” …”every major regulatory decision since the 1996 Act…” (p. 5); and
- Go back all the way to 1999 and do-over FCC Chairman Kennard’s decision to encourage facilities-based broadband competition, i.e. “reverse the foundational mistake of its broadband policy framework by reclassifying broadband as a telecommunications service,” (p.5) (A “telecommunications services” classification would mean common carrier regulation of broadband prices, terms and conditions).
In addition to advising that the FCC move backwards a decade, FreePress also advises that the FCC and Congress put the proverbial “cart before the horse” in recommending that extremely controversial net neutrality rules should receive equal policy priority with the achievement of the high-consensus, Congressional goal of universal broadband:
- “Congress should concurrently pass a law to place these nondiscrimination protections in the Communications Act.” (p. 6)
- Why FreePress’ advice puts the “cart before the horse” is that it insists on implementing its version of perfect broadband access before much of the country gets any broadband access at all.
Finally, despite some net neutrality proponents’ claims that an “‘extreme’ version of net neutrality is never what advocates have sought” — i.e. zero tolerance for any bit management or prioritization at all — FreePress, the leading advocate for net neutrality via its operation of SaveTheInternet.com, is still strongly advocating the “extreme net neutrality” of no bit interference in its FCC comments on the National Broadband Plan:
“No Internet packets should be given priority over others — whether the priority comes in the form of access, latency, or bandwidth.” (p. 163)
(This extreme net neutrality position would overturn FCC policy allowing for “reasonable network management,” and it would totally prohibit any network cybersecurity to protect consumers, businesses, the economy or the Nation from cyber-attack or cyber-crime.)
“Second, nondiscrimination rules must prohibit network operators from selling or offering any capacity to prioritize some Internet packets over others, whether to a third party or to an affiliate.” (p.164)
(This extreme net neutrality would effectively outlaw the existing diversity of products, services, tiers, prices, speeds and features in the marketplace that meet consumers’ wide diversity of needs, wants and means. Moreover, it would disincent any private broadband investment, because it would offer no opportunity for competition, innovation or return on investment.)
“Finally, nondiscrimination rules must prohibit Internet access providers from charging additional fees to allow specific types of Internet content, applications or services to be used.”
(This extreme net neutrality position would be grossly unfair, requiring the vast majority of light to average broadband users to heavily subsidize the high cost of serving the 5% of bandwidth hogs.)
In closing, the real big decision for the FCC in devising its National Broadband Plan for Congress is choosing which road to take at the fork-in-the-road ahead.
Does the FCC choose the consensus broadband road that is proven to move most everyone forward — together and most quickly? Or does the FCC choose FreePress’ “extreme” road which would explicitly require the FCC to move backwards ten years to “do-over” the last ten years of FCC/court broadband policy decisions?
_________________
Scott Cleland is one of nation’s foremost techcom analysts and experts at the nexus of: capital markets, public policy and techcom industry change. He is widely-respected in industry, government, media and capital markets as a forward thinker, free market proponent, and leading authority on the future of communications. Precursor LLC is an industry research and consulting firm, specializing in the techcom sector, whose mission is to help companies anticipate change for competitive advantage. Cleland is also Chairman of NetCompetition.org, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Precursor LLC and an e-forum on Net Neutrality funded by a wide range of broadband telecom, cable and wireless companies. He previously founded The Precursor Group Inc., which Institutional Investor magazine ranked as the #1 “Best Independent” research firm in communications for two years in a row. His latest op eds can be seen at www.precursorblog.com.
Fair Use: This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material available in my efforts to advance understanding of political, human rights, economic, democracy, and social justice issues, etc. I believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research, educational, or satirical purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site/blog for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.